Tele-prompt thisFollow

I thought he did a good job in his interview with O'Reilley. It was pretty well spoken.

Edited, Jan 26th 2010 4:22pm by Xsarus

false. What actually happens is that you don't know what to do when someone agrees with you and so you flog the inconsequential stupid issues, rather then ones that matter. The whole health care debate is an excellent example of this. Don't try to work with the system, just rant about death panels.

I'll ask you the same question. Did you watch live speeches by Bush and form an opinion? Or just hear a bunch of people talking about how bad he was and form your opinion that way? Or, having been told that he was a bad speaker, did you then watch every speech he gave looking just for mistakes?

In the opposite direction, did you hear a bunch of people gushing about what a great speaker Obama is and therefor view him in that context?



It's not about that. It's about how often one chooses to read prepared statements versus how often one speaks extemporaneously. Bush tended to prefer a more "straight talk" style. Obviously, big speeches were on teleprompters. No one's talking about that. But when Bush would show up for a smaller venue, like a town hall type event, or a meet and greet, he usually went sans-prompter. He might have some small prepared remarks, but then mostly just talk with/to the people there.

Obama seems to prefer the prepared talk bit. Maybe it's his teaching background coming out or something, but he tends to show up everywhere with a teleprompter, he rarely goes off script, and he rarely just "talks" with people. It's certainly a stylistic difference, but it's also perfectly fair to point out what while Bush provided more gaffes, he was also putting himself in a position to do so more often. We could dismiss Obama's preference for prepared statements with minimal off-script chatter as just a personal preference, except that he has shown that when off script he seems to make simple mistakes even more often than Bush did.


With Bush is was more about mangling words, or using colloquialisms which some might find "hickish". But with Obama it's (perhaps unfortunately for him) something else. He tends to make mistakes with common words which most "ordinary" people should know. It's "unfortunate" because his gaffes play into the stereotypical "liberal elite" label, where a politician is so removed from "real people" that he can't remember the difference between say an inhaler and a breathalizer. I've watched Obama sit and try to work his way around words to describe something which most people just immediately know is <whatever>. He'll use 10 dollar words when 1 dollar words would do, and often actually uses terms which aren't really the most accurate.


So yeah. It's relevant to point out that he avoids this.

Speaking well =/= teleprompters.